Activity 8 Enhancement Strategies

Having reached week 10, I am stepping back and finishing what I started in week 8.... I always dreamt of being able to travel through time....

This week's focus is on enhancement strategies.

I will focus on this broadly as my current 'teaching' is limited to short skill workshops with small numbers of staff on campus and doesn't quite fit with the MOOC and Open Education model.

I really applaud the open education movement, but still wonder how it would be sustained as a global provision as a substitute to education through existing educators and educational establishments. How would the quality and credibility be affected if there were not the professors within higher/tertiary education, as used by Saylor.org, available to create these resources and provide peer review.

I love their tag line HARNESSING TECHNOLOGY TO MAKE EDUCATION FREE

Will the open education world develop its own 'professors' and critical peers through Badges and online reputation alone? or will universities still be required to do this? and at what cost and whose expense?


I really like the structured approach of saylor.org in their course delivery and that of the xMOOC (still getting my head around the cMOOC configuration).

As they are similarly structured to a 'traditional' higher education experience they may be more easily digested by academics seeking open content and students seeking to build their own learning experience.

Initial bullets: applicable aspects and challenges...

• Motivation, we usually have a clear motivation for studying. The where and how are big factors in this. Choosing to study in an Open Education/ MOOC model may not suit all our learners. So I do hope we don't throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.
• Video delivery, I started doing this years ago (I don't record many of my own but enjoy the OERs of others. Academics where I work have been using slides, videotapes and DVDs for many years and are now moving to the digital version and are catching on to the rich resources on the internet and local creations which we stream. 
• Digital media creation, this is something we are starting to do more of now. We slowly winning over academic staff to the idea that a video capture can be of value to the student in many ways. We just have to shake of the myth that face2face delivery is the only way. The biggest challenges have been cost for the equipment, servers, cameras etc, skill and time of the academic staff to create 'high quality' reusable digital media rather than live capture for one distribution.
• Flipped teaching, I started doing this years ago but didn't know that was what it was called! Local interest is slowly growing. We have a few champions, who are an inspiration to others. 
• Free access to books through digital devices. Fantastic and I already encourage this, I read lots of e and audio books through my smart phone (from my local lending library). Our limitation would be the licence provided by the publishing houses and student access to copyright content not published under CC BY. 
• CC BY is great to show permission for content sharing and reuse. 
• Peer reviewed resources add credibility and confidence to the courses.
• Use of Professor consultants to develop course content (!adds speciality and credibility!) but as indicated earlier, at whose expense? 
• Certificate of completion. Will this suffice in the professional workplace? Will it be possible for vocational professionals to become qualified entirely through Open Education? Is this the goal or are these the exceptions?

xMOOC

The final message in the video is that the MOOC is for those who are not the 'best of the best', those who are unlikely to get into the 'top universities'.

So it could/ probably is a great opportunity for students who unlikely or unable to get into the elite universities. But we should not sell them short. Traditionally students are paying many thousands $ £ for their 'university education', there is kudos in the experience, the student makes friends and builds networks with others which can be an asset to their work and career. All of which can be replicated, to some degree, in the virtual world.

Personally I believe the big challenge is its massivity and open aspect of the MOOC. As a student I want and need to have flexibility to study in my preferred way, this includes place and time, and I want and need to feel part of the cohort. When there are many thousands of learners and possibly only one member of the 'teaching' team I anticipate this would be a challenge.

I think the challenge here is for the Higher Education and employment community to value learning and skill development through non-traditional routes.
I believe we are still in an environment where employers of those in 'professional' roles require tangible validated evidence of learning. The certificate, degree, statement of professional competence. Will the Badge take over?

Activity 7 Supporting Learners with Tutor and Peer Communications

This week I focussed on two activities.

Activity 7.2: The practice of peer review

Review a fellow participant’s post on Activity 7.1 – ( I selected http://www.megankime.net/models-for-supporting-learning-salmon-octel-7-1/ )   consider:

• If the design / approach or mix of approaches is appropriate for the given context. 
• Aspects of the design you think work particularly well. 
• At least one suggestion for improving the design
• Resources they might refer to in order to improve or extend the design.

I too am familiar with and use Gilly Salmon's 5-stage model.
I am intrigued to see you have flipped the model so it is top down rather than bottom up. I quite like the step visualisation that you are progressing upwards in the activity, however I also appreciate the need to step down and back up again with each new learning encounter. I like the idea of repeating steps 3-5 as each new learning activity is encountered a new set of technology skills may need to be mastered along with the acquisition of subject knowledge. So repetition is fine with me.
One improvement... echoing others  I think there is value in spending a little more time on socialisation. The wiki tool is probably ok, if there are clear instructions on how to use it (however it is also worth considering,  why do they need to learn to use this tool?) The socialisation could begin in the discussion tool (so they can master this before the learning activities begin. Participants could post images, music, voice files etc to introduce themselves.  Jim's suggestion of using Voicethread sounds like a good idea.
Although it might go against the MOOC grain, I also believe if we introduce 'required' aspects to a course the technology selected really should be delivered via institutional site licenses rather than student ploughing their way through EULA, institutional licences can be constraining but there is the bonus of support, stability and student ease of access.

Resources: You may find these an informative read.

• Mastering Online Discussion Board Facilitation Resource Guide (TeacherStream, LLC) http://www.edutopia.org/pdfs/stw/edutopia-onlinelearning-mastering-online-discussion-board-facilitation.pdf
• Gen­er­at­ing and Facil­i­tat­ing Engag­ing and Effec­tive Online Dis­cus­sions (Uni­ver­sity of Oregon) http://tep.uoregon.edu/technology/blackboard/docs/discussionboard.pdf

Click this link to read my my comment published to Meegans Blog -

Activity 7.3: Reflecting on peer feedback

Having reviewed a peer’s contribution, reflect on:

• Did the experience of reviewing someone else’s learner support design, help you to consider aspects of your own design? What skills could peer review help you to develop as an online learner?
• Consider your own learner support design, and articulate what changes you would make to your own design as a result of having reviewed someone else’s

I liked Megans approach in alreading reflecting on her design as she presented it for critique. This experience did help me think about my own design. I find in blended courses the requirement for stages 1-3 to happen in the first week so the content delivery begins in week 1 highly problematic. There is always a small number who missed the orientation in week 0 and have not mastered the technology by week 1.

In my staff development workshops, I will spend a little more time on the face to face icebreaker activities before jumping in to mastering the technology. Pair work is really useful so encouraging pairs helps in the workshop and may also help foster a supporting partnership when people return to their offices to put everything into practice.

Activity 10.3

Activity 10.3

I had two questions...

1. How will I/we/they (academics) know when/whether the technologies deployed have enhanced learning? 
2. How can we identify when learners have disengaged from learning because the technology acts as something other than an enhancer? 

I am not entirely sure I have a succinct answer for either.. yet.

Right now I think my own experience for Q1 has helped me to feel more comfortable with the learner measuring this aspect. The learner will know if it has enhanced their learning, they can tell me this through evaluation of the learning activities I present. I think my role is to ensure that the technology I utilise in my teaching is inclusive/ used inclusively and where I make recommendations or use specific technologies, that they are freely available, easy to use, and suitable for the learning activities intended.

Regarding Q2, I got to this point personally a few times. Technology, even for the confident, can be overwhelming at times. A few times I did wonder whether the blog I began was enhancing my experience or creating too much stress ( from my over scrutinisation of my writing) to be worth the effort. A brief forum post would have been sufficient! I have Twitter but didn't really use it effectively, I have Google+ 'ditto', maybe I will use it more.... maybe I won't...

It was good to have choice, in the technologies and locations to post and build my evidence for my own learning activity. But to engage in meaningful discussions one to many, there was too much choice, this lead to my feelings of increased isolation. I think this view heavily shaped by my previous experience of online learning with clearly defined groups of members and communications in fewer locations. I have learned that I am an an apprehensive Blogger, Tweeter but can now reflect on experience.

I haven't felt a member of a cosy learning community but rather a knot contributing to create a huge Network...

So which knot are you?

I have enjoyed the MOOC. I have a few more weeks of materials to work through so I will continue my learning journey.

Just stuck my first badge on my backpack

Activities 6.1, 6.2, 6.3

Activity 6.1: Reading and reflection

Refer back to activity 6.1

Read pages 5 – 25 of Effective Assessment in a Digital Age (JISC, 2010), then consider the following questions.

• How does your assessment approach(es) align with the four teaching and learning perspectives (page 11)?
• Each of the activities oifs focussed on Associative perspectives with the subject/practice expert providing feedback to the students so they can develop their expertise in each delivery of the activity.
• How does your assessment approach(es) align with the twelve REAP (Re-Engineering Assessment Practices) principles of effective formative and feedback (page 15)?
• Broadly these opportunities were of a formative nature, however there were minimal marlks awarded to encourage completion of each part of the learning activity (a discussion point in itself).
• Colleague 3 actively encouraged students to respond to their blog postings and has a dialogue with each student within the blog. C1 and C2 were primaily one way feedback to student with no follow up.
• How would you describe your assessment design from the manager’s, practitioner’s and learner’s perspectives (page 17-22)?
• The manager would probably be encouraged by the use of the institutions technology to develop skills of staff in ditital teaching and assessment, this is part of the institutes vision and strategy. Stability and equity are key drivers. They are also interested in student satisfaction in their online assessment experience. 
• The practitioner in these scenarios, like the opportunity to access the students work remotely and to distribute feedback within the task. They did not express efficiency in work load as they were still reading and marking each contribution,. A quiz of technology administered test would present different workload demands.
• The learner, might view the technology as useful for their access off site. Potentially they could engage in the reflection and critique activities and review their feedback at a time  which suited them. They wer developing skills accessing and using the technologuy which are transferrable and feature within graduate attribute profiles.

Activity 6.2: Evaluation and review

Please visit the forum to read my contrubution 

Activity 6.3: Discussion

• What is your own experience of feedback (either as a tutor or as a student) in technology enhanced or online programmes?






• From a student perspective my experience is very limited. Feedback during the MOOC has yet to arrive, probably my fault as I am behind in the work but I had hoped there would be at least one person in the course team following up snails like me.

• How can we ensure that students engage with, and act on, in a timely manner the feedback provided?
• Should we be striving to ensure students engage with feedback, if they own and are responsible for their learning isn't it up to them whether they engage and if they do what the then action.
• I personally value feedback so need little motivation to seek and consider it. 

Activity 6 Timely, Effective Assessment and Feedback

Timely, Effective Assessment and Feedback

Technology enhanced learning 

• How does the assessment align with the course learning outcomes?
• What kind of feedback would the learner receive and how would this contribute to her progress
• Which technologies would support this?

Several colleagues have adopted the use of CampusPack Blogs within Blackboard LMS to support students reflection on learning and their practice. The students are required to submit a blog posting to record their skill progression and reflect on their journey.

Colleague 1)  has created separate weekly blogs, each one a separate blog because they wanted to control student access and close and open the blog to permit marking activities. The learner recieves written feedback after each weeks blog. There is no clear progression between blog postings as skills can differ each week.

Colleague 2) has created separate blogs, there are four separate blogs three have prescribed themes for the student ro reflect with models/frameworks provided to guide reflection. The fourth blog the student decides from the three previous models/frameworks and then undertakes reflection on their theme. The student recieves feedback on the application of the model/framework to their reflective writing and on their skill in academic writing. The is clear progression between each blog for development of reflection skill and academic writing.

Colleague 3) created a course level blog and discovered that students were reluctant to engage in critical discussions on discuss challenging situations in their practice experiences in view of their peers, the postings presented were at a superficial level. (I can relate to this as I still find writing in this Blog a challenge at times, who is reading this?) We had to rebuild the blog so it was private reflection. The students were being assessed on their critical discussions and their academic writing.

Each of these colleagues had identified the reflection and academic writing within thir course objectives, neither had identified learning to use the blog tool as an objective. Students were given deadlines for work to be submitted so there was no distinction made between little and often or all at once submissions.

In each instance the Blog tool was not the appropriate tool for the activity.

C1 - will use Private Journal next time.

C2 - is likely to return to online assignment submission with feedback annotated on work 

C3 - still wants to use the blog tool and is considering face to face ice breakers to build student trust and ability to discuss critically in the online environment.